El Fuerte (エル・フォルテ,Eru Forute?) is a Mexican luchador in the Street Fighter games who made his first appearance in Street Fighter IV. He spends his time perfecting his lucha libre skills and honing his cooking abilities and his indomitable spirit is a match for even the legendary Red Cyclone. El Fuerte now travels the world in an effort to assemble the greatest recipes on the planet.

Contents

El Fuerte is a short, but very muscular Hispanic man. He dresses in typical luchador uniform with black elbow pads on his arms and a gold sash on his waist. He wears short, white tights buttoned up to his thighs, with three blue stars on his rear. El Fuerte also wears white, laced, wrestling boots with golden soles. His mask follows the pattern of the rest of his outfit, being white with gold trim and having three blue stars on his forehead.

El Fuerte's brown hair sticks out of his mask in a flared out ponytail-top, and also also reaches out of the bottom of his mask.

El Fuerte's role in the game's story is minimal. He joins the tournament to fight the other champions and discover what they eat and also test his lucha libre skills. Along the way, he meets Zangief who is his rival and fights to see if "A hurricane is stronger than a cyclone.".

El Fuerte's ending finds him asking what recipe is suitable for a great hero. E. Honda and Zangief suggest their favorite food (Chankonabe and Borscht, respectively). El Fuerte then suggests and mixes them together and adds some chilli peppers and some lemon. The results apparently tasted foul, as Honda and Zangief's faces turn blue with disgust. Then an oblivious El Fuerte proclaims the food "tastes so great it sends you straight to heaven!".

El Fuerte's story is similar to his Street Fighter IV story. He joins the tournament believing that "the ultimate fighter, deserves the ultimate menu!", and that winning the tournament will have him "reach the stars of ultimate delicacy!".

El Fuerte's ending has him in the kitchen, cooking, with a fellow cook asking about what the green liquid next to El Fuerte's is. Claiming it was spoken about by "a sumo-wrestler friend" , it is revealed as Aojiru, and he praises its nutritional qualities, but questions why the Japanese call it "blue juice" when it is green.

The cook asks why he's putting it in the chili soup, and a close-up shows many other assorted objects in the pot, including fish-bones. El Fuerte's reasoning is that "adding one delicious thing to another delicious thing always equals... more deliciousness." With this in mind, he adds some chocolate he got from "that French mercenary", which causes the fellow cook to snap and shout that he's only making the dish worse.

El Fuerte appears in UDON's Street Fighter IV comic which focus on the game's newcomers (himself included). El Fuerte is shown to be a huge fan of R. Mika; in one scene, one of her matches is being shown on TV at a restaurant. T. Hawk requests that the channel be changed, since he can't stand pro wrestling; this prompts El Fuerte to burst from the kitchen and yell at T. Hawk. In the panel, Mika's image visibly adorns every piece of El Fuerte's cooking attire, and Fuerte is also shown to keep a lot of Mika themed knick-knacks around, such as lunchboxes, posters, figurines, etc.

Also, El Fuerte's Ultra Combo seems to be based on a Hurracarana Pin from Wrestling.

His Japanese voice-actor, Daisuke Ono, portrayed another over-the-top chef in the anime series Minami-ke.

Despite speaking Spanish, El Fuerte may make a mistake with his own language. Sometimes, when defeating a female character, he will still refer to them as "amigo." The more accurate version would be "amiga," the feminine version of the word meant to be used when referring to a woman. This may be a developer oversight, similar to how Guile would tell Chun-Li to "Go home and be a family man" in Street Fighter II.

Concept artwork for Street Fighter IV showed El Fuerte wearing a scarf around his neck instead of a sash around his waist.

El Fuerte has a sous-chef seen in his intro for Street Fighter IV and in his ending for Super Street Fighter IV.

El Fuerte's mask bears a remarkable resemblance to El Santo's, one of Mexico's most influential and iconic Luchador enmascarado.

It is possible that El Fuerte's backstory is inspired by the title character from the film Nacho Libre, who is a terrible chef who decides to become a luchador.

One of El Fuerte's concept alt. costumes looks similar to that of WWE wrestler Rey Mysterio, specifically the attire used during his Wrestlemania 22 entrance.

Interesting enough, there's also two characters from Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon with kinda similar names to El Fuerte and Crimson Viper from SFIV; El Toro Fuerte and Viper of the J-Team.

Though never explicitly mentioned, it is possible that El Fuerte may have been a former member of T.Hawk's tribe. Dialogue during their rival battle indicate that El Fuerte has known T. Hawk for a long time and is acquainted with other members of the tribe ("How's the chief doing?" "Strong as ever!"). It is also possible that T.Hawk may have trained El Fuerte how to fight, as his post battle quote is "It's like I've always told you, it takes more than just strength to win." The fact that both characters hail from Mexico also hints towards this.